November 11, 2004

pubsub: brand clutter

Inspired(?) by Scoble's vision of tracking 10,000 feeds, I added some PubSub fiber into my daily diet. Among other things I thought it would be interesting to track what folks were saying about my employer, but it seems that the term "hp" is not exactly unique to the company. In two days of trolling this high-traffic feed, I've learned that HP means:

* Harry Potter, and man is there a lot of slash and adult fanfic around that little wizard.

* handy phone, as in lots of teens(?) journaling about when they turn their hp on and off, when they play with their friends' hp, and when their hp goes through the laundry.

* hit points for people's D&D and online game characters.

* horsepower.

* HP Lovecraft.

If I were an hp brand person, I would find all this clutter a bit problematic. I would also be interested in understanding why there's not more visible conversation about my brand in the blogosphere. I'd probably even think about hiring a blog evangelist to push my marketing messages.

Of course if I were a cluetrained brand person, instead of focusing on the brand, I might be thinking about how to fire up the conversation between and among hp people and the folks they are trying to make stuff for. In their human voices, not just their marketer and customer/user voices.